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| Islamophobia led to Slavery |
As many things do, this story begins with a
storm at sea. A Dutch ship carrying 20 African slaves to Brazil is blown off
course and slams into the outer banks of Virginia within rowing distance of the
English settlement in Jamestown. The Dutch make a deal: fix our ship and we’ll
give you 20 barrels of sugar. But the laborer-deficient Jimmies say, how about
those men over there? Welcome to the future United States, Africans, and
centuries of slavery and oppression. But wait. Not yet.
So these 20 Africans are unchained and
escorted off the slave ship. The Jimmies don’t take out the whip. Instead, they
hand them shovels. They give the Africans the same deal they got: seven years
of backbreaking labor for The Man (the Merchant Adventurers, underwriters of
the settlement) and then . . . freedom. Meaning, a lifetime of backbreaking
labor for yourself. They were Indentured Servants. After their
term, just like the Euro-Jimmies, the Afro-Jimmies got a few acres and a pat on
the back.
Wait? Where’s the Massa and the bullwhip?
Not yet.
Meet Antonio Negron, aka, Anthony Johnson.
At the end of his indenture, he got some land, grew tobacco and indigo, took on
his own indentured servants, got more land, more servants. He became one of
the biggest planters in Virginia, with over 200 workers, mostly European.
To recap: One of the richest men in America
in 1640 was a black man and he had over a hundred white men working his fields—and
that was considered normal. At the end of their Hard Seven, all of them,
whether they came from Gloucester or Gambia, were given the same deal; land and
a handshake.
What happened?
In the classical and medieval world, there
is tribalism based on religion or geography. But all that ugly racism (leading us to Nazis, Bull Connor, and the
Birthers) doesn’t appear until the late 17th century and then used
to justify slavery, ipso facto.
It doesn’t start with color of skin.
It starts, as many things do, with the
Puritans.
The problem with Anthony Johnson and the
other Africans mixing it up in the jambalaya of humanity making it rich in the
New World was not skin color, but religion.
The vast majority of Africans in America were
Muslims.
The problem with Anthony Johnson was his
God.
Puritans hated Islam more than Catholicism,
almost as much as they hated the Jews.
So, as the Massachusetts Colony became more
successful and had more clout they made laws to prohibit Muslims, Catholics,
and Jews from owning land.
Eventually, Catholics got Maryland and Jews
settled in Rhode Island. They had powerful connections in European politics.
Muslims did not.
What did Anthony do? By this time he was a
devout worshipper of the only religion that really counted in America. Keep
your muezzin, show me the money. He converted to Christianity.
In compliance with the worship of money,
however, businessmen gradually
changed the laws to confiscate African-owned land. From there, it’s an easy
step to take suddenly indigent blacks and make them work—for free and, unlike traditional
slavery, for life and, here’s the real innovation, create generational slavery
so children are automatically born bonded.
Like Jews in Germany, Africans in America did not at first realize the momentum of these new laws.
Once it became obvious that things were
changing, Anthony bought and freed as many “slaves” as he could—in vain. Slave
trading proved profitable. The game was up.
Anthony died sometime before the
slave laws really kicked in. (Georgia waited until the 1750s to make slavery a legal
distinction, only a generation before the Revolution for Freedom
and Equality—oh wait, not for you, sorry).
How did the black people react to this
unfortunate series of events? How would you? Stunned at first, disbelieving
(again the parallel to the Jews in Germany), then outrage. Stories of slave
revolts don’t often make it into the history books because it’s embarrassing at
Back to School Night, but we’ll get to that later.
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